


I Love Him

by clarapaget



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 07:58:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17935880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarapaget/pseuds/clarapaget
Summary: Quentin and Julia have a heart to heart.





	I Love Him

There is no explaining how love is able to consume a person; beat them down with sticks, words, gestures; though it feels, for Quentin, that love is actually quite easy to define. Love had always been loosely thrown around for Quentin growing up. His mother “loved” him. His teachers “loved” him. Julia “loved” him. But their love fluctuated. In reality, the love that Quentin’s mother felt for him was constructed and maintained by the idea that she needed to be a part of his life only because she had introduced the concept of life to him. In reality, his teachers were only astounded by his work ethic, and sometimes lack thereof; their love was a drain, a breakable bond formed only to build up a foundation for other students that they would eventually teach, and later to manipulate the same way they did with Quentin. “Look at Quentin, reading his book, being quiet. Take advice from that.” In reality, Julia was his best friend; best friends are supposed to love each other as opposed to being bound to and utterly attached to, ready to kill and maim and experience the idea newness for them. 

But now, after Alice, after their venturesome relationship, Quentin could really define love. Love was Eliot. Love was living fifty years with him; having a child; having experiences rare to those trapped in mindless, consecrating suspension. 

Though, he needed to tell someone. It was bottling over; it felt like an infatuation; only lust for more experiences and opportunities with Eliot. He was so ready to relive fifty years with that man. Fifty years, but this time Quentin would lay-out the cards and they would express their love without repressed, idealistic imagery. Though somehow, after living, in hope and anguish and frustration with Quentin… Eliot had declined that second chance. It destroyed Quentin’s state of mind; he was consumed, not by love for Eliot, but stress and confusion and, perhaps, the notation that Eliot put himself on a lifeline so that Quentin could live happy for fifty years and not Eliot himself. 

But “peaches and plums, motherfucker” meant something. Quentin had to rethink, rehash his way of thinking; and he went to the only person in the world who knew him as well as Eliot did. Eliot, who had gotten to hear about all his childhood stories during their fifty years. Now, though, Quentin could recount, Eliot had refused to tell him a single word about his childhood.  _ Nevermind _ , Quentin thought,  _ I will go to Julia. She will know. She is the only other person who could ever understand this affliction the way I do now. _

 

~

 

They sat together in Kady’s apartment, which had once been Marina’s. Even now, Kady refused to let the knowledge of the ownership swap be known. So it was Kady’s apartment, without hesitation. She’d had been out on her own errands as of late; everyone seemed to be missing suddenly; just as similar to Quentin’s aching heart. 

“You paused, Q,” Julia said, smoothing out the blue couch. “You paused and someone got hurt. Shoshana was killed.” She was not angry; upset, most definitely, but she wasn’t angry at Quentin. It was, it seemed, impossible for him to break her heart again. The last time he was able to fracture it, crack it even a little, was when he told her magic wasn’t real, even when she showed him the sparks and crackles that her fingers could puff out.

“Yes,” was all Quentin was able to say. He picked at the couch, a little stitch coming undone. The two friends used to be so similar when they were kids. They both fell in love with Fillory, fell in love with escaping, fell in love with freedom; then Julia fell out of it all and Quentin was finally lost, by himself, in a fantasy, begging for it to become reality. 

“You hate the monster. You hate him for killing Eliot. Why did you pause? Why did you hesitate?” Julia egged him on. She had been so close to dying; Shoshana would do anything for Julia, but was that love? Was it a love she experienced fatally? Shoshana risked her life; Quentin would call that love; the definition was unraveling now.

“But that’s the thing, Jules. Eliot isn’t dead,” Quentin said.

“How can you be so sure?” Julia asked. Earlier tonight, when they had returned to the apartment, the walls ached with silence and tension; now she was pouring out questions. And Quentin knew he needed to respond to them all; that he couldn’t be so veiled like he usually preferred.

“The monster is heartless and cold and demented, no doubt. But those were Eliot’s words. Those were words from a conversation only the two of us know. He broke my heart, but I love him,” Quentin answered. His hand had moved away from the stitch on the couch and to his jeans. They were rumpled; he had been too depressed; stuck in a desperate, uncomfortable state of living, that he’d forgotten to act human, to even breathe for a second. 

“Q…” Julia breathed. She had known for since forever that Quentin had been in love with her once. She knew the lengths he would go; the devotion he felt for the person he loved. 

“I know, Julia. I love him and he loves me back, just… I saw the fervor in his eyes. The tone in which he spoke to me... Those few seconds I had with him, they were entirely him,” Quentin said. Julia almost looked ready to reach across and hold Quentin. She was fierce with love; a protector, a bringer of light. 

“We will save him,” Julia said and Quentin nodded, sucking in his bottom lip. It was a rough habit; a worrying trait that reminded him that “anything could go wrong.”

“I know,” Quentin said back. He wanted to reach out, hold Julia in his arms; replace the emptiness that sat beside him; find comfort in the warmness of another body; but instead, Quentin kept his hands on his jeans, rubbing the tense nerves out of his thighs. “I know, and things will be different, and this time Eliot will come to his senses.”

It seemed for a minute that Julia would agree, but she didn’t. “How can you be so sure?” she asked. There was a rattle from the icebox; it sent a splint of shivers down Quentin’s spine. He thought for a minute, in the silence, that the monster would return from its otherworldly visits and happen upon Quentin desperately trying to relay his emotions about Eliot to Julia. As far as the monster currently knew, Quentin believed Eliot was dead.

“Peaches and plums,” Quentin said. “That’s sure enough for me. I don’t know what brought him back, I don’t know why those were the specific words he chose to say… they came from a conversation so long ago now… and I… I just know that Eliot, wherever he is trapped, has taken that time to sit back and recount.”

Julia instinctively crawled slowly on the couch toward Quentin. She was graceful in her movement, sliding her slender body toward him like a floating angel. Perhaps, as much as Julia was a goddess, she was an angel too. With hesitation and almost strain, Julia put her hand on Quentin’s shoulder as if to brace him. 

“We will save him,” Julia repeated.

“Yes,” Quentin whispered, eyes fixated on Julia’s. “We need to. At this point, after the devolution of myself, I don’t think I can really live without him again.” And he moved his hand up from his jeans and placed it over Julia’s. She gave him a soft smile; a touch of comfort in this heartfelt moment.  _ Yes, they would need to save Eliot _ . 


End file.
